Thinking teacher education through military imaginaries: A diffractive and decolonising reading

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article problematises Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and assessment practices to contribute to the ongoing work of decolonising higher education. It critiques the entanglement of military imaginaries and ITE via a diffractive reading of ITE discourse and policy in the Australian context through military imaginaries in academic and SF literature. In military imaginaries there exists an imperative to enact warfare as ‘target processing’; that is, the essence of warfare is understood to be the operationalisation of a continuous cycle of identification of targets, selection and implementation of pre-determined methodologies to match these targets, followed by measurement of the outcomes of the process. This article considers how current ITE expectations prioritise a similar continuous cycle of selection and implementation of standardised methodologies and measurement of effects; effectively an ideology of ‘teaching as processing’. It examines how this expectation assists in creating certain concerning expectations and disappearances within teaching and education.